Divided In Death
J.D. Robb
Putnam, Feb 2004, $23.95, 368 pp.
ISBN 0399151540

When she gets the pictures in the mail of her husband and best friend in bed together, security expert Reva Ewing goes over to the house where they are having their tryst to confront them. She breaks in and marches into the bedroom only to find them murdered. She is gassed by someone in the room and when she comes to she calls her mother who is Roarke's administrate assistant.

Since he knows and likes both women, he asks his wife Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the NYPSD to take the primary lead on the case. When she arrives on the scene, she sees strange anomalies and thinks Reva was set up to take the fall. Although she has to arrest Reva based on the circumstantial evidence, Eve doesn't stop looking for the real killer. This case is one of Eve's toughest because she has to deal with Homeland Security, double agents and techno terrorists while trying to convince Roarke not to do something that could destroy their marriage.

J.D. Robb, also known as Nora Roberts, has written one of her best books in the Death series. For the first time in their marriage Eve and Roarke have a problem that neither can compromise on and it distracts Eve in her investigation, which is difficult enough because she is dealing with Homeland Security. There is plenty of action, enough fresh twists to keep the storyline fresh, sizzling and a moral dilemma that must be resolved to keep readers enthralled with this extraordinary police procedural romance.

Harriet Klausner